Join us as we discuss what Devops and Networking is going to look like over the next five years. Our goal is to create a conversation for change similar to what CloudCamp did for Cloud adoption and DevopsDays for Devops. We will start the conversation with guest speakers in the morning and then open up for discussion using an Open Spaces format in the afternoon. - John Willis (more)

Speakers

John Willis

John Willis has some interesting perspectives on the origin of the DevOps movement. Most people think of DevOps as something created conceptually by Patrick Debois in 2009, but from John's point of view, it can be traced all the way back to W. Edward Deming 's '14 Points for Management'.

JR is the co-founder and CEO of Cumulus Networks where he is responsible for the overall strategic direction of the company. JR has been involved with networking since Ethernet only ran on coaxial cables. He's worked on some of the most foundational networking products of their time, from early Network Interface Cards at 3Com through switching and routing products at Cisco. JR's early involvement in home-grown networking at Google and as the VP of System Architecture for Cisco's Unified Computing System both helped fine tune his perspective on networking for the modern datacenter.

Nathan is the DevNet lead for network programming and SDN at Cisco, with a specific focus on the design and implementation of virtual network based systems development lifecycle platforms. Nathan has been involved in professional software development and technology strategy for over 28 years, with a commercial background divided between finance and telecommunications.

Within the Cisco DevNet developer program we’re exploring ways to help DevOps teams connect seamlessly between the network and automated provisioning platforms. DevNet membership is free and easy to sign up to. https://developer.cisco.com/.

The beauty of Puppet is the simple yet powerful foundation it provides for automating the management of the entire data center.

A word from John Willis

Around 8 years ago, I started working with some tools that focused on software engineering collaboration and automation for operations. At the time, CFEngine and Puppet were the main tools promoting this new way of doing operations and sharing within operations and software development. In 2009 Chef was born and I was fortunate enough to join Opscode as the 9th employee as an evangelist preaching this disruptive form of collaboration and automation. At the time a majority of IT infrastructure was managed by what I called the “Bob” of the world. Bob’s scripts, Bob’s directories and Bob 'til death do us part. Trying to explain to Bob the benefits of collaboration and software engineering principles was a hard fought battle. One of the compelling events that helped propel these ideas (what we now call Devops) was cloud computing in the form of IaaS for compute resources. Fast forward to 2014 and these infrastructure automation and collaboration battles still exist but the battles are far less bloody. A new war is emerging in the network operations and engineering space. The same argument for network operations adopting these principles is the same as system ops; however, now the new compelling events are network virtualization and Software Defined Networks in cloud infrastructures. Cloud engineers and network operations are dealing with the complexities of managing a new breed of software based network gear like Arista, Cumulus and Insieme along with virtualized network infrastructure like Openvswitch, Openflow, OpenDaylight Nuage and NSX. Configuration tools are starting to get more sophisticated around these virtualized networks doing things like automated VLAN to Port mapping and basic system hardening. CFEngine, Puppet & Chef have introduced primitives supporting platforms like Cisco, Juniper, Arista and Cumulus Networks. Help us start the discussion of what Devops and the network is going to look like over the next 5 years.